1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to connection of equipment used in subsea operations, such as equipment used in the subsea oil and gas industry as well as telecommunications, to shore-based stations or other remote systems, and is particularly concerned with a subsea electrical, optical, or electro-optical connector unit with a built-in data collection and communication system.
2. Related Art
There are many types of connectors for making electrical and fiber-optic cable connections in hostile or harsh environments, such as underwater or subsea electrical, optical and hybrid electrical and optical connectors which can be repeatedly mated and demated underwater at great ocean depths. The connectors may be electrical only, optical only, or may be hybrid electrical and optical connectors. These connectors typically consist of releasably mateable plug and receptacle units or connector parts, each attached to cables or other devices intended to be joined by the connectors to form completed circuits. Each connector unit contains one or more electrical and/or optical contacts or junctions for engagement with the junctions in the other unit when the two units are mated together. To completely isolate the contacts to be joined from the ambient environment, one or both parts of these connectors house the contacts in oil-filled, pressure-balanced chambers. One example of an electrical underwater pin and socket connector is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,645,442 of Cairns and is sold by Teledyne ODI, Inc. of Daytona Beach, Fla. under the name Nautilus®.
Monitoring of modern undersea communication and power systems is needed in order to predict faults or diagnose degradation in performance of various system components. Land-based systems exist that can be used to connect a data or power port to verify or measure the presence of data or power at the port, but this data is monitored locally. There is no effective way to monitor subsea installations on an ongoing basis for early detection of potential faults or potential equipment failures.